A special day is coming around soon that I’m sure you won’t want to miss. I was reminded of it when I saw a photograph of a man pointing to a sign that said “member’s testimonials”.
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I have seen such a sign, or signs that looked like it, increasingly in recent years. I don’t know if it
signifies the standard of education that young people receive. I would not say that school teachers have much to answer for, but I do wonder at times. Maybe the club, or whatever it was, had only one member.
It’s become an epidemic. The proliferation of such signs is almost as bad as the misplaced modifier. I received something in the letterbox the other day. It was a folder from a real estate agent that said something like: “Offering exceptional value, Greg welcomes your early inquiries.”
OK, so you want to know what’s wrong with “member’s testimonials”. Firstly, tell yourself what school you want to and then narrow it down to the teacher. Then, at 2am tomorrow ring the teacher and ask him or her what’s wrong with “member’s testimonials”.
But I started out by mentioning a special day.
September 24 is that special day.
Jeff Rubin decided that September 24 was to be recognised, in the United States of America at least, as National Punctuation Day.
Let’s have National Punctuation Day in Australia and New Zealand, as well as the USA. We can think of lots of material for the day.
In my years as a newspaper copy editor I had some frustrating moments.
I remember telling a reporter that in most cases the apostrophe to mark the possessive of a singular noun went before the s and for a plural noun went after the s. Soon after, I received a report about a childrens’ organisation. When I mentioned that the
apostrophe was in the wrong place, he said something like “well, you said”.
The book called Eats, Shoots and Leaves touches on many of our punctuation mistakes. The title allegedly referred to a panda that entered a restaurant, shot the waiter and departed. I know some people have called the book by other than its correct name, but I won’t fall into that trap. The book shows the differences in meaning that can be caused by the wrong placement of a punctuation mark.
We’ve all read the signs about banana’s for sale, new CD’s just in or 1000’s of bargains.
What can you do on National Punctuation Day?
You could read a newspaper and mark with a red pen all the punctuation errors you see (remembering that you and not the newspaper might be wrong), you could make a note of all the incorrect street signs and then send a rude letter to the council, you could annoy your neighbourhood signwriter or you could prepare for National Grammar Day, which I’m told falls on March 4.
The errors in our society are abundant, but be careful about pointing them out in case your superior attitude comes back to bite you one day.
But hope lives, while we have the Apostrophe Protection Society looking after our literary health and while we can make use of National Punctuation Day.
lauriebarber.com; lbword@midcoast.com.au
